Some Google Music Lockers Had Apparently Been Emptied (Updated)

Update 6/11: We have some good news on this. Google spokeswoman Gina Weakley responded to Evolver.fm’s inquiry as follows:

“This is now resolved. It was a display issue on the web, but didn’t impact phone or tablet playback. The music was never lost.”

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Google recently sent out another round of invites to its cloud-based Music Beta by Google locker, which stores up to 20,000 songs, for free, and allows users to listen to them on a variety of devices. Unlike Apple iCloud, Google’s music locker requires users to upload their files, which can take hours, days, or, in Apple’s words, weeks.

Unfortunately, some users are seeing their lockers empty, which could mean that they have to complete that entire lengthy process all over again. It might have something to do with those new invites — or maybe not.

Paul Lamere (of The Echo Nest, publisher of Evolver.fm) alerted us to the issue with a post on his MusicMachinery blog. “I just fired up my Google Music account this afternoon and this is what I found [screenshot above],” he wrote. “All 7,861 songs are gone. I hope they come back. Apparently, I’m not the only one this is happening to.”

Indeed, a quick Twitter search confirmed that others appear to be suffering from the same issue (again, see update above; according to Google, the issue has been resolved):

ApeVigoda: “Umm. Anyone else just have all their music disappear from Google Music? Not happy about this.”

minispalla: “Yeah my google music site is dead but i can use the mobile app and upload strange very strange”

stevenolen: “Oh no my google music interface is all messed up. can’t listen at all!!! #betameansbeta”